Lyon
Leaving Marseilles by train we hoped for a much smoother trip to Lyon and we were not disappointed arriving in Lyon too early to get into our room. Reception eagerly stored our bags and advised us how to find the Old Town, even gave us a map on which they marked where to go, “Turn left when you leave here and at the main road take the tram for two stops then the metro to ‘Place Bellecour’ then cross the river”. Looking at the map when it was being marked up, this was a straight line and not too far so we decided to walk, an easy walk to the metro then through the memorial park, along Rue Victor Hugo and we were there, we remembered where the river was so headed to the bridge and crossed it now how far did we need to go?
Went to look at the map, Carol thought I had it I thought Carol picked it up, neither of us had it, NO MAP. Ok we will just keep walking to where I thought we could see older buildings, walking till we started to see lots of police and road closures, apparently, we were walking right into a protest. So, we back tracked, but by now the jar my back received in Marseilles started to really ache so I needed to rest and sit down, we found a café and had lunch, before continuing back to the river bridge where we saw even more police “Riot Police” complete with 3 water canon trucks, what had we walked into?
A Sad Sight
From here we quickly headed back to our hotel, and look at the map so see where we went wrong! There are two rivers on Lyon, The Rhone and the Saone, you guessed it we crossed the wrong river we turned right at ‘Place Bellecour’ and we should have turned right, still we had a good lunch, and I could now rest my back.
On our first walk we did see one hop-on hop-off bus but could not see where it stopped, we needed to look that up, having found where we bought a one-day ticket as the map showed the area, we wanted to explore was not that big and reasonably flat.
Taking the bus we were able to pinpoint the area we were interested but it was not as flat as we thought as there were two sites quite high up, fortunately we were shown on the bus how two funicular trams serviced the two sites, the “Basilica of Notre Dame of Fourvière” and the “Gallo-Roman Museum of Lyon-Fourvière”, we also learnt of how because people were taxed at how wide there properties were people negated this tax, Housed were narrow and between two roads to allow for this doors opened onto private courtyards some of which could be entered as long as people were quiet as sound in these places echoed and became loud.
The following day we setoff to explore the old town and use the two funicular trams to find what we could, during this time we were advised by another traveller to enter a door, a rather non-descript door with the no 8 above it in “Rue Juiverie” this led to one of the private courtyards and houses that had no street front (see photos in The Old town and its hidden treasures Gallery).
On our last day we again went to explore the old town to photograph the trompe-l'œil we had seen on the bus but this time we turned right when leaving the hotel heading for the Saone River past a number of barges people lived in before finding one with lots of greenery only to be told it was a church.
Having the photos, I wanted we returned home going past Ampere statue and resting near the metro in the WW2 memorial park this time looking closely at the reason it was there, it was the site where the Gestapo murdered 47 people 42 of them children
The Memorial Stone
Then resting to ease my back where we saw something I have never witnessed in Australia 7 solders armed with assault rifles patrolling the area, the photo below found me at the rough end of questioning demanding to see the photo NOW OR ELSE, even a local had never seen such a reaction, so sad.
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Welcome to Herman and Carolann’s Travels to Europe
Portugal Trip 2023